Description

Chris Hunter has the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world - he's responsible for bomb disposal in the British sector of Iraq, pitted against some of the most ruthless and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job - his team defuse over forty-five bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they're up against don't play by the Geneva Convention. For them, there are no rules, only results. Bombs, rockets, grenades, ambushes, booby traps - death by any means necessary. Welcome to the real Wild West.But for Chris Hunter, just when life couldn't get any more dangerous, the stakes are raised again. Halfway through his tour, he is told: 'They want you dead, Chris. You and your team have captured their weaponry, you've fingered them with forensics, you've neutralised a shedload of their IEDs, and basically you're making Behadli and his lot look like c**ts. They're out to kill the golden-haired bomb man in Basra...' Suddenly Chris Hunter is not only saving other people's lives, he's saving his own...show more

Review quote

"Will do for Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush what McNab did for Saddam and George Senior" Evening Standard "[Hunter] writes grippingly, honestly, thoughtfully and above all simply ... Julian Rhind-Tutt does the adrenalin buzz bit brilliantly" Guardian "A gripping account of the life of a bomb disposal expert who served in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. You listen to him recount one incident and think he must have been insane to go back for more. But he did - again and again and again. Gripping stuff - and Julian Rhind-Tutt captures Hunter's voice perfectly." Expressshow more

Review Text

A British Royal Logistic Corps captain shares his experiences of front-line service in Iraq.Trained in IRA and Colombian FARC tactics of bomb construction, 31-year-old Hunter shipped out to Iraq in 2004 for a 101-day tour disposing of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rooting out bomber teams. Despite his disgruntled wife (she wanted him back home in Oxfordshire) and two small daughters, Hunter admits that after 13 years on the job he still found its dangers and risks exhilarating. That may not be the adjective that comes to readers' minds as they peruse his narrative, written as a present-tense diary of his tour of duty. IEDs created havoc for the troops in some 2,000 attacks a month, and sniffing out insurgents and their homemade bombs in a country where Westerners were angrily resented was perilous and extremely dicey work. Soldiers were both witting and unwitting provokers of disaster. Hunter saw a husband give his pregnant wife a severe beating after her burqa slipped and the British gazed at her face. He did nothing, he later explained to his men, because he'd heard about what happened when some fellow soldiers retaliated against a man who had beaten his 11-year-old daughter - the father cut her throat "to save his honor." Neutralizing banks of explosives was a punishing, thankless task, and Hunter was frequently plagued by guilt and sadness about the violence he and the Americans inflicted. Eventually, he had to say goodbye to the other blokes (lots of jocular Briticisms here); he was promoted to major and got a desk job as a staff officer, leaving the situation in Iraq much the same as when he arrived. Ponderous platitudes from Gandhi to Gilda Radner form epigraphs to each chapter but don't add much gravitas.Hunter's prose is wooden, his experiences rather formulaic, but he offers singular glimpses of the Iraqis' harsh, hardscrabble lives. (Kirkus Reviews)show more

About Chris Hunter

Chris Hunter joined the British Army in 1989 at sixteen. He was commissioned from Sandhurst at twenty-one and later qualified as a counter terrorist bomb disposal operator.He served with a number of specialist counter terrorism units and during his career deployed to numerous operational theatres, including the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq. For his actions during his Iraq tour he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal by HM Queen Elizabeth II.show more